Cognitive Construal Of Direction Lexicalization In English And Chinese Motion Verbs

The thesis is an attempt to study the direction lexicalization in English andChinese motion verbs within the framework of construal theory. With British NationalCorpus, Corpus of Contemporary American and CCL corpus as the main sources,“S+V+O” or “S+V” as the discriminant, the thesis tries to analyze the similarities anddisparities of lexicalized directions’ features in English and Chinese motion verbs interms of hierarchy, orientation and formation in space net and explain the construalcause of conceptualizers with the help of window of attention.The major findings are that (1) English motion verbs can lexicalize17directions,and Chinese can lexicalize19directions; the shared directions are [+unfixed],[+to thegoal],[+forward],[+front],[+upward],[+off the ground],[+downward],[+away],[+circle],[+curving],[+up and down],[+backward],[+into] and [+toward and back];English has its own lexicalized directions:[+unordered],[+internal to around], and [+Zshape], while Chinese has [+out],[+opposite],[+mutual],[+around to center] and [+centerto around].(2) English and Chinese motion verbs have a close number of lexicalized directionswith high degree and share [+forward] and [+away] as directions with high degree,[+upand down] and [+toward and back] as directions with low degree; English motion verbshave less lexicalized directions than English in terms of inclusiveness, but lexicalizeddirections in English motion verbs can include more sub-directions; English and Chinesemotion verbs both have few lexicalized direction with high specification, but English motion verbs have more lexicalized direction with low specification; English and Chinesemotion verbs both have more lexicalized directions with simplicity, but English motionverbs have more lexicalized directions with complication; more lexicalized directions inChinese motion verbs exist in pairs than those in English motion verbs, showingexpression tendency in three dimension.The findings come from English and Chinese conceptualizers’ construal of motionevent, especially the window of attention i+1. English conceptualizers construe directionsin6windows of attention: window of changing dimension direction, window of centripetaldirection, window of pointing direction, window of direction of height, window ofdistance direction and window of direction of face orientation; while Chineseconceptualizers in4windows: window of centripetal direction, window of pointingdirection, window of direction of face orientation and window of distance direction.